The research project was a collaboration with Conciliation Resources entitled "Disarmament of the Heart", funded by the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund. On of our experts, Emilie, led a qualitative research that aimed to inform a culturally and gender-sensitive MHPSS and Peacebuilding intervention.  

The team deployed  both an anthropological and psychological framework to explore how the conflict shaped local experiences of distress and helped to elicit the specific social-psychological determinants of the well-being of the selected communities affected by the conflict in CAR. We were able to document how crucial are:

• The inextricable relationship between communities and the spiritual world
• Cultural understandings of the drivers of human behaviours
• The explanatory models for individual and collective responsibility for action and agency in relation to illness, violence or destruction, and death.
• The constructions of the mind and of the experiences of suffering. They provide the keys to the rituals and practices available to enable affected individuals and communities to heal after traumatic events. 
• The understanding of the spiritual beliefs and local cosmologies of affected communities is central to MHPSS and Peacebuilding work.

The analysis produced was used to shape a Peacebuilding intervention, as well as two policy briefs: "Mental Health and Peacebuilding in the Central African Republic. Implications for Policy and Practice" and "Gender, Mental health, and Reconciliation in the Central African Republic. Implications for policy and practice."

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